Lamprecht, despite the screaming agony of his fingers and his crawling fear knew Malise almost certainly lied, so he shrank away and babbled; the platform swayed again and Malise was suddenly there, close enough to touch, his face lopsided with rage.
‘There,’ Malise declared, throwing one dramatic arm back the way he had come, ‘is the man who wants you dead. Tell me what you know …’
‘Hilfe … save me first,’ Lamprecht whimpered, seeing a bargain to be made, even now.
Kirkpatrick was trembling and slick-wet when he finally hauled himself over the lip of the platform. Christ in His Heaven, he thought, whom I will surely meet two steps from here, I am so high.
He started to tremble his way to his feet, marvelling at how anyone could climb that spider’s web of wood every day … not for all the siller in the world, he thought, starting to pick a way over the coiled rope and paint-slathered pots.
Then the world hit him and he reeled, caught desperately with one hand and felt cloth, felt it tear, then fell, rolled and slid over the platform edge – and stopped, hanging by the snag of his sackcloth cloak. Something black fell past him with a shrill cry.
Malise thought he had succeeded when he rammed into Kirkpatrick, catching him unawares and driving him to the edge of the platform – then, just as the man teetered on the brink, Malise felt the clawing hand grab his sleeve, tugging him off balance and they staggered until it tore. Malise, feet tangled in a coiled rope, felt himself falling, flailed wildly at the air – then clattered to the plank walkway and rolled over the edge like a stone.
There was a sickening, bowel-opening moment of plunge, when the dim flagstones of the floor screamed towards him – then the rope-loop cinched tight round the ankle of his shoe and, the other end fastened to the winch for raising heavy loads, he swung like the pendulum of a bell, clear across the space of the nave where the white, open-mouthed blobs of the priest and the Master limner sped below him like strange birds.
He hit the other scaffolding with a sickening crash that drove sense and the air from him, swung back, spinning while the lashed wood creaked, cracked and finally collapsed in a rolling thunder of noise and dust clouds. On the way back again, his shoe slipped off releasing the loop and he fell the last little way like a bag of rags, rolling heavily to the feet of the astounded priest.
Above, Kirkpatrick heard his cloak start to rip, flailed in a panic to get a handhold and heard it tear even more, so that he dropped a foot. One hand reached up and grasped a pole, just as the cloak tore in two; he hung, feeling the savage pain of his own weight tearing his arm from the socket. He looked up at the sound of a step, saw Lamprecht leaning over, brown with wide grin.
‘El malvoglio,’ Lamprecht said and wished he had a knife – wished he had unbroken fingers to be able to hold it. That gave him an idea and his grin grew wet and red; he raised his foot to bring it crushingly down on Kirkpatrick’s fingers.
Kirkpatrick braced, knew he would never resist the pain of it, that he was about to take a long, hard fall into Hell itself … looked up into the leering face for one final curse on the ugly little shit …
The face changed in an instant, to one of absolute bemusement, staring down at the length of bloody steel which had just sprung out of his belly. It disappeared with a sucking sound that seemed to cut some hidden string inside Lamprecht and the little pardoner slumped sideways, mewling.
Kirkpatrick, blinded by sweat and pain, saw a black-gloved hand grasp his wrist, then a tremendous strength hauled him up and on to the platform, where his legs refused to carry him; he sat, shaking, looking at the twitching remains of Lamprecht.
The man who had killed him was all brown and black, wiping the length of sword clean on Lamprecht’s tunic, so that Kirkpatrick saw the pommel of it, the Templar cross clear. The man’s black spade beard split in a grin as he tore free what was around the dying pardoner’s throat, already slick with his own bloody vomit.
‘Rossal de Bissot,’ he announced in French, then jerked his head back the way he had come. ‘You should have realized how a fat painter would get to his workplace and saved yourself a climb. Now we must hurry and use the same counterweight lift – this place is carnage, no?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Herdmanston Tower, Lothian
Six days to Midsummer Eve, June, 1305
Hal and the Dog Boy came up on Herdmanston under a low sky like a bruise, the weather hot and heavy and the garrons moving as if underwater. Thunder growled behind the hills.